New Asia Pac cable launched for bandwidth express

Links Philippines to Japan, HK, Singapore

Construction has commenced on a new 7,200 km fibre optic cable linking Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

The $US300 million, Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE) is expected to be built by Q3 2012 giving the project’s lead carrier Philippine Long Distance and Telephone Co (PLDT) access to double its international bandwidth capacity.

The ASE system will also connect the Philippines to Malaysia, and in subsequent phases China, Vietnam and Thailand.

"ASE can be connected to other major cable systems to Europe, the Middle East, the other parts of Asia, and the United States of America," PLDT Network Services Assurance Senior Vice President George Lim said.

PLDT said it is jointly undertaking the undersea cable network project with NTTCom of Japan and StarHub of Singapore, in partnership with NEC and Fujitsu.

"We have designed a future-ready network that can potentially supply more than 15 Terabits per second capacity, initially using 40 Gigabits per second wavelength technology, and in the future, 100 Gigabits per second wavelength capability," Lim added.

The network will also add redundancy for man-made and natural disasters which in the past have caused the temporary isolation of some countries in the area. ®